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EDGAR ALLAN POE’S 200TH BIRTHDAY
What His Doctor Revealed
About Poe’s Assassination
by Anton Chaitkin
On his 200th birthday, we celebrate the genius of Edgar
Allan Poe, uplifter of the common man to reason and
self-government. He was the Republic’s warrior, a
leader of American patriots’ intelligence wars against
the British Empire.
In his stories, poems, essays, and criticism, Poe
championed the “soaring” Plato and Kepler against the
“creeping, crawling” Aristotle and Newton. He waged
a blazing literary combat against the trans-Atlantic im-
perialists who ruled and strangled American literature
through British magazines and a clique in the New York
newspapers. The empire feared Poe’s popularity, which
could lead inspired humanity to storm the heavens.
Stung by his criticism, cabals in New York and
Boston called him a drunkard, a drug addict, a sexual
pervert, and a plagiarist.
Rufus Griswold was an editor and a serial character
assassin who had attacked Poe, and been nailed by Poe
as a liar. Griswold hoodwinked Poe’s bereaved family
into turning Poe’s papers over to him for an “official”
edition of Poe’s works. Griswold then wrote a Poe bi-
ography, shamelessly vilifying Poe, saying he had died
of drunkenness or a drug overdose. He promoted the
menticidal lie that the power of Poe’s creative imagina-
tion came from insanity and narcotics, and not self-
guided intuitive reason.
Though it was soon discredited by all authorities on
Poe’s life and work, this filth by Griswold circulated
globally, and provided an excuse for the British and
their underlings to perpetuate their Poe Myth.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809,
54  American History EIR  January 16, 2009
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twenty-four days before Abraham Lincoln. To honor
Poe’s 200th birthday, EIR presents here excerpts from
the 1885 book written by the physician, Dr. John J.
Moran, Jr., who attended the dying Poe after he was
brought to a Baltimore hospital, in 1849.
From A Defense of Edgar Allan Poe. Life, Charac-
ter and Dying Declarations of the Poet. An Official Ac-
count of his Death, by his Attending Physician, John J.
Moran, M.D. William F. Boogher, Publisher. 1331 F
Street, Washington D.C., 1885. (Subheads have been
added.)
Dr. Moran’s Report
The Slanders
Thirty-five years have elapsed since the death of
Edgar Allan Poe. . . . [How] he died, up to the present
day, remains a matter of doubt except so far as have
been gathered from a few brief voluntary publications
made by his physician. [Many] false charges . . . have
been made and published, and distorted accounts that
have been received as truth. . . .
. . . Mr. George R. Graham [Poe’s employer as an
editor/writer in the early 1840s, when Poe wrote “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue,” featuring the Poe-like de-
tective, Auguste C. Dupin] . . . in 1850, . . . wrote and
published the most forcible defense that has yet been
made . . . [which] so uncovered the falsity of [Rufus]
Griswold’s account of Poe’s life that few if any are now
left to give it a place in their thoughts or memory. . . .
The Doctor and His Hospital anxious wish to see her. Said the General: “Mr. David
The hospital in which the poet died has been ques- Poe, who resided in Baltimore when I was here, had,
tioned as to its standing and character. My professional out of his own very limited means, supplied me with
experience has been assailed, my veracity and even my five hundred dollars to aid in clothing my troops, and
own identity have been disputed. . . . his wife, with her own hands, cut out 500 pairs of pan-
The hospital in which Poe died was second to none taloons, and superintended the making of them for the
in Baltimore as to size, comforts and location. . . . The use of my men.”
Washington College Univer- Mr. David Poe, Jr., son of
sity Hospital, in which hun- Gen. David Poe, of revolu-
dreds of students daily tra- tionary memory, was the
versed its wards, receiving father of Edgar Allan Poe,
instruction at the bedside of who was born in Boston on
patients from able professors January 19, 1809. . . .
of the faculty. . . . I . . . con- In the year 1833, [the
ducted and controlled this in- young Poe was] a competitor
stitution for six years as resi- for two prizes offered by the
dent physician, living with my proprietor of the Saturday
family on the premises. I had Visitor . . . in Baltimore. . . .
the entire charge and respon- The committee [praised] “the
sibility of house and patients, singular force and beauty of
including United States sail- [Poe’s entries] . . . . [and]
ors, a portion of the hospital awarded the premium to a
being set apart for [them] who tale entitled the “MS. Found
were sent there by order of the in a Bottle.”. . .
Government. . . . Mr. John P. Kennedy,
chairman of the committee,
Poe’s Family and became the firm friend of Poe
General Lafayette and continued so to be until
Mr. David Poe, the grand- his death, and when informed
father of Edgar Allan Poe, . . . Edgar Allan Poe, in his poems and other writings, of the decease he declared it
engaged in mercantile busi- championed the “soaring” Plato and Kepler against the impossible to credit any of
ness. During the Revolution “creeping, crawling” Aristotle and Newton, and waged
a literay war against the British cultural imperialists. He
Griswold’s stories of the
[he] became a deputy quarter- was murdered by his enemies. poet’s life.
master of the Maryland line . . . I here aver that there is
. . . and had often been called no evidence and never has
Major and sometimes General Poe. [It] was at [his Bal- been, that Poe ever was seen drunk, or that he ever got
timore mercantile] office that he received General La- drunk from the year 1845 to 1849, embracing a period
fayette, Count Rochambeau, Count DeGrasse and other of four years. Later he confesses to the effect of stimu-
French officers. . . . lants at long intervals, but of these four years preceding
In . . . Niles’ Register, October 23, 1824, is recorded his death, we have the clearest testimony that he was a
a visit of . . . General Lafayette, to Baltimore [43 years temperate man.
after the battle of Yorktown]. . . . Mr. George Graham says: “For three or four years I
After an introduction of the surviving officers and knew Poe intimately, and for eighteen months I saw
soldiers of the Revolution who resided in and near Bal- him almost daily; . . . writing or conversing at the same
timore to the General, he observed to one of the gentle- desk; knowing all his hopes . . . he was always the same
men present, “I have not yet seen, among these gentle- polished gentleman, the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful
men, my friendly and patriotic commissary.” The scholar, the devoted husband; frugal in his personal ex-
General was informed that Mr. David Poe was then penses, punctual and unwearied in his industry, and the
dead, but his widow was still living. He expressed an soul of honor.”

January 16, 2009  EIR American History  55

The Assassination
Poe . . . was in my care and under my charge for six-
teen hours. . . . He told me . . . where he had been, from
whence he came, and for which place he started when
he left Richmond, when he arrived in Baltimore . . . and
the name of the hotel where he registered. . . .
Poe left Richmond on October 4, 1849, . . . by
boat. . . . Mrs. Shelton, his affianced, [said] that the poet
parted from her at her residence at 4 P.M. October 4th,
to take the steamer “Columbus” for Baltimore, intend-
ing to visit Philadelphia and York, to close up some
business he had with certain publishers and return to
Richmond in a few days. She states that . . . he . . . said to
her: “I have a singular feeling, amounting to a presenti-
ment, that this will be our last meeting until we meet to
part no more,” and then walked slowly and sadly
away. . . .
The boat arrived in Baltimore about 4 o’clock on the
morning of October 5th. . . .
He left for Philadelphia about noon and went as far
as the Susquehanna River, across which the passengers
had to be transferred by boat, there being no bridge at
that time. The river being very rough, owing to a storm
then blowing, Poe refused to venture across. He re-
mained on the cars and returned to Baltimore.
Arriving there at about 8 o’clock P.M., a porter car-
ried his trunk to the hotel he had left in the morning.
Alighting from the cars he turned down Pratt street, on
the south side, and walked toward the dock where his
boat was. He was followed by two suspicious charac-
ters, as the testimony of the conductor will show, and
when he reached the southwest corner of Pratt and Light
streets, he was seized, by the two roughs, dragged into
one of the many sinks of iniquity or gambling hells
which lined the wharf. He was drugged, robbed, stripped
of every vestige of the clothing he had on when he left
Richmond and the cars a little while before, and re-
clothed with a stained, faded, old bombazine coat, pan-
taloons of a similar character, a pair of worn-out shoes
run down at the heels, and an old straw hat.
Later in this cold October night he was driven or
thrown out of the den in a semi-conscious state, and
feeling his way in the darkness, he stumbled upon a
skid or long wide board lying across some barrels on
the west side of the wharf, about thirty yards from the
den. . . . [They had left] him half dead. He stretched him-
self upon the plank and lay there until after daybreak on
the morning of the 6th. A gentleman, passing by, no-
ticed the man, and on seeing his face recognized the
56  American History EIR  January 16, 2009
poet. He called a hack, and [sent Poe] to the hospital,
arriving there about 9 o’clock.
. . . My witnesses are Judge [Neilson] Poe, of Balti-
more, a second cousin of the poet; and the conductor of
the train, Capt. George W. Rollins, well-known in Bal-
timore. The . . . conductor a few days after the poet’s
death [met me] on the street [and] said, “I saw in the
papers the death of the gentleman I had on my train the
other day.” I asked, “Do you know who he was?” He
said he did not at that time, but he had learned since that
it was Edgar Poe. He remarked that he was the finest
specimen in appearance of a gentleman that he had
lately seen. “I was attracted to him from his appear-
ance.” [I asked,] “how was he dressed?”
He replied, “In black clothes; his coat was buttoned
up close to his throat. There were two men well dressed
that came aboard of the train from the other side of the
river, having come from Philadelphia or New York.
They took a seat back of Poe. From their appearance I
knew they were sharks or men to be feared, and when I
got out of the train at Baltimore, I saw them following
Poe down towards the dock.”
. . . Mrs. Shelton, who yet lives, [said about the]
clothing he had on when he left her in Richmond on the
4th of October, . . . he was dressed . . . “in a full suit of
black cloth.”
. . . [At the hospital,] I did not then know but he might
have been drinking, and so to determine the matter, I
said, “Mr. Poe, you are extremely weak, . . . I will give
you a glass of toddy.” He opened wide his eyes, and
fixed them so steadily upon me, and with such anguish
in them that I had to look from him to the wall beyond
the bed. He then said, “Sir, if I thought its potency would
transport me to the Elysian bowers of the undiscovered
spirit world, I would not take it.”
“I will then administer an opiate, to give you sleep
and rest,” I said. Then he rejoined, “Twin sister, spectre
to the doomed and crazed mortals of earth and perdi-
tion.”
. . . Here was a patient supposed to have been drunk,
very drunk, and yet refuses to take liquor. The ordinary
response is, “Yes, Doctor, give me a little to strengthen
my nerves.” I found there was no tremor of his person,
no unsteadiness of his nerves, no fidgeting with his
hands, and not the slightest odor of liquor upon his
breath or person. . . .
He . . . said that he [had] had . . . “a vague and horri-
ble dread that I would be killed, that I would be thrown
in the dock. . . .”